[New York Peasant: By Wilfrid: May 4, 2007]
Tickets were acquired for this new musical of old music based pretty much on just Hal Prince being the director (and yes, the sets to whizz about impressively). As the "k" in Musik hints, it's a Germanic saga - the story of Kurt Weill and Lott Lenya's on-off marriage/affair/mutual-muse-worship, stretching from Weimar Berlin to New York to Hollywood.
It's dressed as a love story, but the relationship is more dysfunctional than that suggests. Lenya, from her first scene, avows her freedom to bang toy boys at will, almost literally under Weill's nose. Weill swears tolerance, and is mutely obedient to Lenya's whims until the later part of Act Two, where he mounts a sneaky rebellion. Purportedly based on the couple's correspondence, I am insufficiently expert to challenge the facts of the story - although I was uncomfortable with the caricature of Bertold Brecht (breezily played as a vaudeville huckster by David Pittu), hilarious though the "Schickelgruber" number may be. Brecht was the dramaturge behind the great Brecht-Weill dramas: they reflect not only his language, but his politics and his theater. They were not, as is implied here, musicals constructed by Weill from bits of Brecht's poetry. And that Brecht, a foreign language author and political activist, found exile from the Nazis in the United States harder going than Weill, a facile melodist, is not a happy subject for ridicule.
But none of this subtracts from the exceptional rendering of Lotte Lenya's prickly charm by Donna Murphy. Her reading of "Surabaya Johnny" was superb; her duet with John Scherer on "September Song" touching. Michael Cerveris, fresh from a dominating Sweeney Todd, has a difficult role. Weill is a shrinking, physically unprepossessing hero, landed (as are the other German characters) with a heavy accent. Cerveris is limited, therefore, in the use of his vocal and physical gifts. "It Never Was You", a stunning ballad, is sung in Weill's cracked, mournful tones - correct for the story, but undermining for the song. Generally, the show faces the same problem as any jukebox anthology, from "Mamma Mia" to "The Jersey Boys" - how to find plot pretexts for squeezing in the greatest hits. Somehow, it matters more with Kurt Weill than with Frankie Valli. Great numbers like "The Saga of Jenny" can't find a place, and "September Song" is curiously re-thought as a conversation-piece between Lenya and her long-time gay friend and admirer.
Despite some weakness in the chorus, and some sluggish scenes between the two leads, it's a likeable show. Absent full-dress scenes from Threepenny Opera, Mahagonny or Lady In The Dark, though, Weill's great talent is stated rather than demonstrated.
